1) Lack Of Personal Responsibility: As a society, we encourage a "victimhood mentality" and an overweening government that never met an issue it didn't want to dive into with both feet; so we shouldn't be surprised that so many Americans expect to be rewarded for failure.

(snip)

2) Short Attention Spans: Perhaps because of the internet, the stunning variety of news sources, or the complexity of modern society, we've become much less able as a people to follow logical arguments and deal with complex messages.

3) Excessive Self-Esteem: Perhaps because we've spent decades trying to pump up the self-esteem of children in our public schools, irregardless of whether they've done anything to merit it, we have legions of people in our society who have an excessive level of confidence in their beliefs and abilities.

4) Short Term Thinking/Instant Gratification: Thomas Sowell once said that killing the goose that laid the golden egg can be a viable election strategy as long as it doesn't die until you're out of office and no one finds your prints on the murder weapon.

5) Immorality: The default mode of Hollywood is hedonism and we've been told again and again, at least since the Clinton years, that character doesn't matter for our elected officials.

The problem with this is that character does matter -- quite a bit, actually.